


every promise and lie

by FandomTrash24601



Series: Only Room to Rise [3]
Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Adoptive Parents - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Apologies, Apples, Bad Parenting, Beating, Biting, But not in the sexy way, Caretaking, Child Abandonment, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Crying, Dreams and Nightmares, Feral Jaskier | Dandelion, Forehead Kisses, Gen, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Loves Jaskier | Dandelion, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Insecure Jaskier | Dandelion, Intimidation, Introspection, Jaskier | Dandelion Has Feelings, Jaskier | Dandelion Whump, Jaskier | Dandelion's Parents Being Assholes, M/M, Meeting the Parents, Men Crying, Nightmares, Panic Attacks, Protective Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Romantic Soulmates, Sad Jaskier | Dandelion, Scenting, Siblings, Sort Of, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, The Law of Surprise (The Witcher), Twins, Witcher Senses, excessive apologies, his siblings aren't great either, just a little, where's the tag for selling your kids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:08:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25321420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FandomTrash24601/pseuds/FandomTrash24601
Summary: The way it goes is this: Geralt, ten other heavily armed Witchers, and Jaskier portal into the grand entrance of the Count de Lettenhove’s estate without an invitation. Having been forewarned at Jaskier’s request that he and his family would be spared--for now--but slaughtered should he even think of sticking his littlest toe out of line, Szymon Dorian Pankratz all but pisses himself.Title from The Amazing Devil's "King"
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Series: Only Room to Rise [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1806898
Comments: 50
Kudos: 797





	every promise and lie

The way it goes is this: Geralt, ten other heavily armed Witchers, and Jaskier portal into the grand entrance of the Count de Lettenhove’s estate without an invitation. Having been forewarned at Jaskier’s request that he and his family would be spared--for now--but slaughtered should he even think of sticking his littlest toe out of line, Szymon Dorian Pankratz all but pisses himself. Jaskier tries not to smile, but isn’t so sure he manages it. The entire family is home for some event, caught on their way to some other part of the house. They’re dressed all in finery of the kind that Jaskier hasn’t worn since he was young and innocent; he’d probably feel suffocated in anything like that now.

“Count de Lettenove,” Geralt says coldly, every inch the formidable warlord from the rumors. Jaskier’s never been more attracted to him, his eyes glowing and his stance leaving no room to second-guess his lethality.

“My Lord the White Wolf,” the count squawks, ducking into a deep bow. The rest of the family follows suit--his wife Niebiana, their son Rasz, and their daughters Maruzsa and Piechna. All of them have brown hair similar in shade to Jaskier’s own; it had been a long time before Jaskier had realized that Niebiana had not borne him. “How may I aid you on this fine morning?”

“Stop with the groveling; it only makes you look more stupid than you already are,” Geralt snaps. The family straightens up like puppets whose strings have been pulled, and Jaskier has to bite his lip to hold in a laugh.

“Yes, my lord. Apologies, my lord.”

“May I assume that you know my soulmate, Jaskier?”

Jaskier takes his cue and steps past the Witchers who have been guarding him from both weapons and sight. He keeps his chin raised, his steps sure; he’s here as a superior now, not as a little boy kept in line with well-worn switches.

Piechna recognizes him first and makes a squeaking sound that she strangles in her throat, her cupid’s-bow lips falling into a slack circle. The entire family pales, all too aware of who he used to be and what they did to him, but it’s Rasz who makes sense of Geralt’s words before anyone else and drops to his knees, head bowed.

“Please,” he begs as his family follows suit, the count gone speechless, “spare us our lives, White Wolf. We will be loyal to you for the rest of our days, on our lives and the lives of those who come after us, we swear.”

“He’s not here to hear you beg for your life, Rasz,” Jaskier says. He can no longer hold back a smile, his ex-family’s fear sitting sweet like honey on his tongue. “Besides, if he’d come here to kill you, you’d already be dead.”

“Are you certain that you don’t want them dead?” Geralt growls, his leather-gloved hands flexing into fists by his sides.

Maruzsa bursts into tears, high little keening sounds. She’d never been a graceful crier.

“I’m certain, love,” Jaskier says sweetly.

Geralt makes a noise that even the most dim-witted could read as dissatisfaction.

“No,” Jaskier continues, addressing the count and his family once more, “we’re not here for you at all, actually.” He gazes around the entry hall, all the gaudy furnishings he’d grown up amongst. He could probably still navigate the entire estate in his sleep. How strange it is to be back here; he’d thought when he was dragged from the premises by slavers, screaming and crying and begging for the count to change his mind, pleading that he would be better, that he would never see the place again. “You say I was a Child of Surprise?”

“Yes,” the count manages to say. “Julian, we--”

“You what?” Jaskier’s voice is as soft as silk, but sharper than winter’s worst sting. “You thought that your treatment of me didn’t matter, because I’d die as an obscure cog of the slave trade? You didn’t actually mean all those beatings? You regret your actions because I’m now one of the most powerful men on the Continent?”

“Julian,” the countess breathes, her brown eyes shining with tears.

They might be real tears or they might be fake, but he doesn’t give a shit. This woman had put only a token effort into raising him and then stood silently by as he was sold off like an overly aggressive hound. The sight of her--of all of them--churns his stomach. He keeps his hands clasped cruelly behind his back, the too-tight grip encouraging him to draw his spine straighter and square his shoulders, reminding himself of who he is now and that they can no longer touch him.

“It’s Jaskier,” he says. “Although perhaps you should use “my lord;” I am your better now, after all.”

“My lord,” Rasz says, although the word rolls clumsily and ash-covered off of his tongue, “please have mercy upon us and speak plainly of your purpose here. My mother has a fragile disposition and is ill-suited to such prolonged stress.”

Rasz had always been smart, Jaskier muses. As the oldest son and future Count de Lettenhove, he had to be.

“The woman who gave birth to me,” Jaskier says. “Who is she?”

“The baker’s wife,” the count says. “I saved the baker’s life long ago and, since he had little to give me, invoked the Law of Surprise. He returned home to find that his wife had given birth to twins.”

Jaskier doesn’t know what happens afterward. His mind gets caught on the word “twins” and refuses to progress any further. He has a sibling? A genuine, flesh-and-blood sibling? Do they even know of his existence? And what of his parents? Did they know about him being sold into slavery? Would they have taken him back if they could? His head is spinning. He feels lightheaded; he thinks there’s a hand on his back to keep him from falling as Geralt finishes the conversation.

Fuck, _fuck,_ they can still see him. What does his face look like? He can only hope that it’s impassive, that his discombobulation doesn’t show; he’s spent too long being weak before the Pankratz family, and refuses to allow them even the most minor victory.

He can’t feel his body.

The next thing Jaskier knows, he’s standing inside of Kaer Morhen once more. There are hands on his face, broad and warm and belonging to none other than Geralt. He fights to drag himself back to the present, where Geralt is sweeping calloused thumbs across his cheekbones and murmuring soft encouragements.

He’s gulping down air in heaving breaths when he comes fully back to himself, Geralt’s bright eyes boring right into his. “Did--?” he manages to say between gasps, but can’t elaborate further.

“Did what?” Geralt asks in a low, warm murmur. “Deep breaths, now. Talk to me.”

“Could you tell?” he eventually says, a too-tight chest mangling the words before they can even reach his throat. They’re alone in the entry hall.

“That you were shaken by the news?” He offers a reassuring, barely-there smile. “I could tell, but I don’t think that they could.”

“Good,” Jaskier breathes. He lets his eyes close and his head fall forward so their foreheads thunk together. “Good. So, uh, what happened?”

“Your parents are still local bakers. Both are alive. I made the count and his family grovel some more and promise to never even think of _thinking_ of doing something to challenge me.”

Jaskier makes a breathless sound that’s supposed to be a laugh, but it’s strained.

“Come on,” Geralt urges softly. “Let me take care of you; I know that today’s been a lot.”

“Don’t you have warlording to do?” Jaskier mumbles, progressively leaning further into Geralt’s sturdy grip.

“Nothing urgent. Nothing more important than you.”

“Dad, Jas, you’re back!” Ciri rushes towards them, arms outstretched to wrap herself around them.

Jaskier has the presence of mind to open an arm, allowing her to burrow into their sides. He wraps his arm around their upper shoulders, while Geralt’s hand settles around the middle of her back. Her frame is so small, her hair a cascade of platinum tresses. She fits into their arms like she was born to be there, and it hits Jaskier like a physical slap that she’s the same age that he was when the Count and Countess de Lettenhove sold him. Sharp tears prickle behind his eyes, and he buries his face in Geralt’s shoulder even as he clutches Ciri closer.

Even if she were ten times more irritating, a hundred times more irritating, a _thousand,_ he’d never be able to fathom doing something as horrific as selling her to the highest bidder. She’s so terribly sweet, with cheeks like ripe apples and eyes that glimmer like stars. Who could allow that to be taken from her? Jaskier didn’t even raise her--he’s known her for little more than a month--but the thought of anyone doing to her what the count and countess did to him is sickening.

Geralt, bless him, notices that Jaskier’s about to lose it.

“Why don’t you go find Eskel, Menace?” he asks. “Tell him not to send anyone after me, okay? I’m taking that personal time off that he’s always nagging me about.”

“Alright, dad.” She offers him a deceptively sunny smile. “But I have to tell you about how I pranked Uncle Lambert!”

“I was only gone for a few minutes,” Geralt whispers to himself before promising, “Later.”

Ciri flounces into the depths of Kaer Morhen in search of Eskel. Once she’s gone Jaskier all but collapses into Geralt, shaking. He can’t feel his face, and his hands and feet prickle like it’s midwinter. His heart is skipping beats in his chest, thudding too hard.

“What is it?” Geralt asks.

Jaskier shifts his head back and forth in a minute negative gesture.

“Can you walk?”

Another negative. He can’t breathe, and he doesn’t think it’s because his face is buried in Geralt’s shoulder so he doesn’t try to move it. Not that he’s capable of moving anyway.

“I’m going to pick you up,” Geralt warns him gently, and waits a beat before sweeping Jaskier’s legs out from under him and hoisting him into a bridal carry.

He’s only a little proud of himself that he makes it all the way to their rooms before the tears come. Geralt has a couch in his room, facing a hearth that lights itself upon their entry; it’s just on the wrong side of too hard, but Jaskier can’t be bothered to care as Geralt lowers him down onto it. His skin is crawling, his breath coming in great hiccups as he shakes.

“They sold me,” he sobs into Geralt’s shoulder, having refused to let Geralt go when he was set down. “I was their child and they _sold me,_ oh gods, who could do that? Who could do that to a child? To _their_ child?”

There’s phantom pain digging itself up from scars that had been healed but not forgotten. The lines of fire as the switch landed across his back, again and again until he got the message: be a good boy. The coarse, itchy rope digging into his wrists as he stood naked and trembling on the auction block; how the air had been warm with body heat but he’d been so, so cold. The brutally tight grip that restrained him as he tried to fight against the people touching him, knowing that it would hurt either way no matter what assurances were made and never being a docile kind of boy.

The sobs are painful as they wrench themselves from his throat, from deep within his chest. He hasn’t cried over his situation in years--since before he ever made it to the auction block--but it’s not for lack of grief; just the lack of the safety that he has now, with Geralt and Eskel and Ciri and all the rest of them. He probably sounds more like he’s screaming than crying, like he’s being murdered. Fuck, how many Witchers can hear him? How many can smell whatever the fuck is going on inside of him?

Fucking fuck; _Geralt_ can smell it.

“I’m sorry,” he sobs, “I’m so sorry, fuck.”

“Sorry for what?” Geralt asks. “My heart, you have nothing to be sorry for.”

“I don’t even want to know what I smell like to you.” He clings tighter to Geralt, although the small rational part of his brain knows that letting him go would be kinder. “Fuck, fuck, I--”

“Jaskier.” Geralt has one arm behind his back to support him, the other cradling the back of his head. He hadn’t thought he could get any closer to Geralt until Geralt’s arms flexed and pulled him further inward. “Jaskier, it’s alright. I’ve smelled worse, I promise you. Just let it out; let me take care of you.”

The sound that escapes his throat--at least, he thinks it’s his throat, but he’s not too aware of his body right now--is better suited to a wounded beast than any kind of man. He digs his fingertips into Geralt’s back with brutal strength and draws himself upwards, inwards, trying instinctively to curl himself around the only safe place he knows.

_His butt has long-since gone numb and there’s shooting pain arcing up his back like lightning. The wooden cart bounces mercilessly and there’s no comfortable position to be found, but he’d rather nurse this pain than shift endlessly in a futile search for comfort._

_The sheets are so soft beneath him and he hates them more than anything he’s ever felt. They probably cost more than his parents sold him for. If he dies here, if he’s split right open and bleeds out all over the expensive bedding, will it be a net loss? He can’t even remember; he’s in too much pain._

_He’s so cold, he’s so cold, he’s so_ fucking _cold all the time,_ fuck. _There’s no way he’ll ever be warm again, right? It’s not even winter but his skin is so cold that it burns, the shawl searing like fire where it brushes over his kept-soft skin, his deliberately hairless body._

He’s screaming more than crying, biting down on the warm, cloth-covered whatever in front of him to stem the noise. There’s gentle crooning in the background, something that his brain marks as safe, and he focuses everything on the sound and the warm, slightly squishy mass that he has clamped between his teeth.

It’s a long, long time before he’s aware of the world again. The crooning is still there, slipping through Geralt’s lips into the air. He has the place where Geralt’s shoulder meets his neck pinched between bloody teeth.

“Oh, fuck,” he says hoarsely, yanking his head away from Geralt’s shoulder. He runs his rancid tongue over iron-tanged bone and wonders why Geralt let him do it. “Fuck, sorry, fuck--”

“Jask.” Geralt leans in and kisses Jaskier’s forehead. “Stop apologizing, okay?”

“But I bit you,” Jaskier protests. His voice has gone high and wavery, almost unrecognizable. “You’re bleeding.”

“Sure, but I’ll heal.” He sets a hand on Jaskier’s cheek, slides a thumb gently under his damp eyes. “Do you want to talk about it?”

There’s no question of what “it” is.

“I mean, I think it’s pretty obvious.”

Jaskier pries himself away from Geralt, who lets him go albeit reluctantly, and lays down fully on the couch with an arm slung over his eyes. He hears the shifting of fabric past the beat of his own pulse, his headache throbbing in time. Damn, his head hurts. He’d forgotten that crying did that.

“That’s not what I asked,” Geralt murmurs.

“I just--” His aching throat constricts once more, although he’s not sure he has any actual tears left. “Ciri’s the same age I was. I’d never really thought about it before--I was the oldest I’d ever been when they sold me; I certainly didn’t feel too young after the first day--but I was a _child.”_ He takes a deep, shaking breath and holds it, lets it out slowly and whispers, “I was just a little boy. What kind of monsters could do that to a kid, especially one they raised?”

“I’m in the monster-killing business,” Geralt helpfully reminds him.

He laughs, although it’s warped by the fact that his entire body is shaking. Adrenaline’s a bitch, and so is Niebiana Pankratz. He could use an apple, he thinks distantly, and a very long nap. A very, _very_ long nap, preferably one of the ones where Ciri climbs into bed between the two of them. That way he can hold her tightly and reassure himself that nobody will ever be able to do to her what was done to him.

“Let them live,” he says. “Let them be frightened. Let them lose sleep over what they’ve done to me, imagining that you know everything they ever did to me.”

“They didn’t just sell you?” Geralt asks, a dangerous lilt to his voice.

“Gods, no.” He’s shaking, teeth clattering noisily together, but talks through it. There’s little he can do to stop his body’s natural responses. “They tried to make me the perfect noble son by beating me first, like enough strikes would drive all the impure, peasant blood from my body. If that was their goal, then really, they should’ve just taken some leeches and done some bloodletting.”

A deep, vicious growl bursts forth from Geralt’s chest. It’s one of the most comforting sounds imaginable in the moment, and Jaskier basks in it as his trembling gives way to full-body exhaustion.

“It’s all right, love,” he sighs. He holds out the hand not flung over his face, and Geralt takes it with extreme gentleness. Gentle, stubbled lips imprint themselves on his palm and Jaskier resists a shiver.

“Let me take care of you,” Geralt says with another kiss. “Eskel brought a basin of water earlier. I can get you some food, if you’re hungry.”

“When was Eskel here?” Jaskier mumbles as he crashes.

“Sometime between you biting my shoulder and coming back to the real world.”

“Ah, fuck.” Shame blooms like a rotten flower deep in his gut.

“There’s no need to be embarrassed.”

Jaskier doesn’t agree at all, but he’s lacking the words to voice his opinion so he grumbles incoherently and hopes that his general mood gets across. Geralt laughs a little.

“Is there any specific food you’d like?”

He’s still frazzled and feels awful for asking and not just accepting whatever they have to feed him, but forces himself to say, “...An apple? Please?”

“Of course.” Geralt kisses his palm again. He doesn’t seem upset, but Jaskier isn’t looking at him so he can’t be sure. “Will you be alright if I leave you alone?”

“Mhmm.”

“Alright then.”

He drifts in the time between Geralt’s departure and return. The couch feels unreal, the fabric too coarse. He can’t complain though; it’s hardly the worst surface he’s ever passed out on. He’s rested on bare, splintery wood, on gritty stone and rancid cots. Compared to all that, a too-stiff couch is a luxury.

“Hey.” Geralt’s voice is hushed like he’s trying not to scare him. It’s a moot point; Jaskier flinches into the couch with a rattling gasp. “Sorry, sorry. I, uh, got you an apple.”

Jaskier peels his eyelids apart, glued together as they are by dried tears, and reaches out half-blindly for the apple. Geralt sets it on the small table nearby, and Jaskier frowns at him. He can almost taste the apple, the give of its skin.

“Why don’t you let me wipe you down first? Get you into clean clothes.”

“Don’t need it,” he mumbles.

“It’ll make you feel better,” Geralt says, sounding so painfully earnest that Jaskier can’t find it within himself to be angry.

Jaskier nods. “M’kay.”

Geralt pulls him upright with gentle hands and helps him strip, using one arm to support him all the while. Jaskier’s still horribly groggy and disoriented. He almost falls when trying to shimmy out of his pants, and would have if not for Geralt’s grip on his bicep. His head throbs and he keeps his eyes shut as Geralt wipes him down. He’d offer to do it himself, except Geralt’s hands are trembling--just barely, but they are--and he knows that Geralt needs to do something useful in order to steady himself.

Jaskier drops his forehead onto Geralt’s shoulder and lets himself be taken care of. He has to fight his own instincts, the ones beaten into him that demand he take care of himself. There’s nothing wrong, he tells himself sternly, with accepting help and care when it’s offered. It’s _good,_ really. Healthy.

When he’s been wiped down, Geralt leaves him just long enough to grab a sleeping tunic and loose linen trousers. Jaskier notes that the tunic is Geralt’s with great fondness that sweeps through his chest. He tugs on the trousers before pulling on the tunic and basking in Geralt’s smell, arms wrapped tightly around himself.

As much as he’s loath to admit it, Geralt was right. After a simple cleaning-up and a change of clothing, he feels much more centered. His head still hurts, but it’s not foggy and he can concentrate with little issue. The first thing he concentrates on is his apple, scooping it up from the table and taking a bite.

“Better?” Geralt asks.

Jaskier has the apple cradled in two hands, held close to his face like a mug of warm cider on a cold winter evening. He nods silently and savors the apple crunching in his mouth, releasing sweet, sticky juice. It’s a firm, crispy apple and he takes another bite with great joy, relishing the sound of his teeth sinking through the thin skin. He can feel himself coming slowly back to normal with each little bite.

“Come to bed,” Geralt prompts.

“‘M not done with my apple.”

“We can eat in bed.” Geralt tosses the covers back and climbs into bed so that he’s leaning against the headboard, his legs spread. He’d changed into his pajamas while Jaskier had been internally rejoicing over his apple, and while the pajama pants are looser than his daywear they still do his physique a service. “Come here, love.”

Jaskier settles himself between Geralt’s legs and pulls the blankets back up so that he’s thoroughly cocooned. Geralt’s bare chest is warm through his shirt and yards better than the borrowed fabric, not that Jaskier would give the tunic up anyway. The more of Geralt he can get, the better. Geralt’s arms are a heavy weight around his waist, thighs a secure bracket. Jaskier all but melts into him, still nibbling contentedly at his apple.

“Did you have anyone take a look at the bite mark?” Jaskier asks when he remembers that he did, in fact, sink his teeth fully into Geralt’s shoulder in the midst of his hysteria. He hadn’t seen it as they got into bed, but it easily could’ve been hidden by Geralt’s hair. Cold guilt floods his stomach and he clutches the apple tighter.

“I ran into Triss on my way to get you an apple. She fixed it right up; no need to worry.” Geralt presses a series of kisses to his shoulder. “It’s alright, Jask, really.” His fingers stroke gently where they rest on Jaskier’s lower stomach, and he resists a shiver.

For a long time the room is silent apart from Jaskier crunching on his apple and the fire crackling in the hearth. He doesn’t remember it being lit. Once the apple has been eaten and the core discarded, the two of them slide properly into bed. Geralt is broad and screams of safety, and Jaskier wastes no time curling into him as the fire burns lower.

“Geralt,” he whispers at last, his heart fluttering in his chest.

“Hmm?”

“You said… Earlier, you said my parents were alive. That they were bakers.” He barely breathes the words, but knows that Geralt will hear them.

“Yes.”

“What about my twin? Or any other siblings?”

“Just a twin. A girl, I think. Alive.” He feels Geralt shift to look down at him and keeps his gaze firmly forward. He can barely even speak about this, much less look at anyone while doing it. “Do you want to find them? It can be as soon as tomorrow, if you’d like.”

“Yeah.” Jaskier barely gets the word past the lump in his throat. He’s shaking with tension, and Geralt rubs futilely at his back.

“Okay then. If you want to be inconspicuous, I’ll send another Witcher with you.”

“No,” Jaskier blurts. “No, I want you.”

“Then I’ll be there.” Geralt’s lips brush over the crown of Jaskier’s head. “Sleep now. I’ll be here.”

Jaskier drifts uneasily into the dark ocean of unconsciousness, lulled by Geralt’s steady heartbeat. It’s not restful, though, because--

_The cart lurches unevenly down a road made into mud by torrential rains. The slavers and those hired to guard the caravan grumble but are bundled in oilskin and have the promise of a future tent. Julian and his fellows have no such promises, soaked to the skin. They’re hardly wearing anything, and when cold gusts of wind buffet the slavers he and his kin gasp and shudder as silently as possible._

_His knees drawn up into the sustained circle of his chained wrists, Julian stares at the center of the cart where all their chains meet and knows that not all of them will make it to the market alive. The man to his left is older, already feeble. The cold and the rain will make quick work of him, and Julian can’t be bothered to care when the man moans and curls in on himself. There’s little more than a loincloth between them all and the world, although the women in the cart are dressed in thin shifts. Still indecent, but offering more protection than the males get._

_“They can’t do this to us,” says the man on Julian’s right. “They can’t! It’s not right!”_

_Julian can barely see his silhouette in the dark, but he knows the man is clenching his fists in rage. He’s been doing so the entire time they’ve been tied up. He’s a decently fit young man, the kind who will likely be shipped south to do manual labor for Nilfgaard until he drops or is killed for impudence. Julian would put a bet on the latter, seeing as he’s already mouthing off._

_“You, running your mouth back there!” The slaver at the front of the cart, sitting next to a hanging lamp that casts weak light, takes the reins in one hand and grabs a whip with the other. Julian sits as still as he can in the jerking, bouncing cart. It’s no use; the whip catches both the man who spoke and Julian, who reels back with a high, shaking cry when the whip lands across his cheekbone. “Shut it, or I’ll really give you something to complain about!”_

_Julian bites his lip until it bleeds and is thankful to the rain for hiding his salty tears. His spine aches, and his butt itself has gone numb but there’s fire creeping down his legs, through his knees and into his ankles. He doesn’t bother trying to get comfortable. He hasn’t been comfortable in weeks, since his own father sold him. Since his own mother stood by and watched it happen, putting up no fuss even as he begged her to help him. The ache of betrayal hurts worse than any whip mark, but like this he can pretend it’s just physical pain that grieves him._

_“Psst.” A soggy toe prods his foot from across the narrow cart. He looks up, but can’t see anything beyond a vaguely person-shaped form. “Hi!” It’s a girl’s voice, high and sweet. She doesn’t sound upset to be half-naked in a slave cart._

_“...Hi.”_

_Thunder rumbles in the distance, and she giggles before speaking in a loud whisper. “Where are you?”_

_“Here.” Julian blinks at her. “Duh.”_

_“Sure, sure. Isn’t the weather nice?”_

_“It’s storming,” he says flatly._

_“But where is it storming?” she asks._

“Here,” _he says, wondering if she’s missing a few marbles. “You know, where we are?”_

_“And where is that again?”_

_His foot slips when the cart heaves itself out of a small rut with a great wet sucking sound, and he winces when a sliver slips into the tender pad of his big toe. There’s rainwater dripping from his hair into his eyes, and he really has to pee, and he has no patience for this girl._

_Lightning flashes, illuminating everything for one long moment. The girl sitting across from him wears nothing but a soaked shift the color of mountain stone. Her hair is probably almost white when dry, but the rain has made it a grayish-blonde color and plastered it to her forehead and neck. Reasonably the lightning shouldn’t illuminate her eyes, but they’re the precise green of emeralds and they glow. She’s smiling, flushed and healthy._

_“It’s okay,” she tells him, plunged into darkness again. The image of her is hauntingly superimposed over what little vision he has. “My dad can help.”_

He lurches upright with a prolonged, gasping inhale like he’s surfacing from underwater. His head is foggy again, his sight blurred with too-recent sleep. At the foot of the bed, Ciri flinches back from his abrupt movement. There’s a hand on his back, warm and broad. Geralt. The fire has burned down to almost nothing, casting the room in barely-there orange, but there’s some moonlight coming in from the room’s windows.

“Ciri,” Geralt rumbles. “Nightmare?”

“Mhmm.” She peers at Jaskier through pale lashes, her lips pulled into a genuine pout. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you, Jas.”

“‘S fine,” he says through breaths that still move his entire chest. “Was a bad one anyway.”

“You’re sure?” she asks, her voice so sweet that it hurts.

He nods a little desperately, still shaken by the image of her in the slaver’s cart with him.

“Do you want to climb in with us?” Geralt asks.

Jaskier has to bite his tongue to keep from begging her to take up the offer; his hands itch to hold her, to know that she’s well and truly safe from his own poor fortune. But while he may not even be a full decade older than her, he’s still technically a grown man and can’t just go about requesting that little girls sleep with him no matter what the context. She’s not his daughter.

Geralt probably feels Jaskier sag in relief when Ciri nods and climbs in between them. She’s so small, nestling down against her father and waiting patiently for Jaskier to bracket her in. So kind. Deep inside Jaskier’s chest, something stings and aches, although he can’t identify what it is. Geralt probably knows better than he himself does.

“Jask, are you alright?” Geralt asks.

“Fine,” Jaskier breathes, settling down so that Ciri’s small, furnace-hot back is pressed against his chest. Her hair--dry, off-white and _dry_ \--tickles his nose. “Just fine.”

Ciri’s scent, made only slightly sour by sweat, lulls him securely into sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! The fourth (and final?) part of this series isn't quite cooperating, but I'll continue to fiddle with it until it does. Until then, I hope you enjoyed this! I know Jaskier sure didn't.


End file.
